Brands
Mastercard revamps its logo keeping digital world in mind
MUMBAI: Leading global payments & technology company Mastercard has revamped its logo, a first for the financial services giant in 20 years, according to reports.
The new card logo no longer reads CamelCase; it’s just “Mastercard” now and in some cases “mastercard’, as per theverge.com. The logo still has the overlapping red and yellow circles and sans-serif font, but all the elements are finer and sharper.
Knowing that almost 2.3 billion people carry the company’s cards, one would wonder why it needed a change in the first place endangering its 20 year old brand identity.
“This is really one of the most broadly distributed and most widely seen marks in the world,” said Michael Bierut, who designed the new branding with Pentagram partner Luke Hayman in an interview with the media. Between them, the acclaimed designers have revamped identities for everyone from Verizon to New York Magazine to Hillary Clinton.
There is also the question of credibility. Consistent branding is one of the ways in which banks and credit cards build trust with their customers. But as the function that these financial services offer have evolved with time between online payment platform, a digital wallet, and a technology company, suiting the current digitally charged consumers, it is important to have a logo that reflects just that.
“It needs to thrive in a digital space,” Mastercard’s customer experience and design head Cindy Chastain had said on the new change. “It’s simplified. It’s modernized and optimized for relevance in an increasingly digital world.”
In other words, traditional financial companies are now opting for logos that not only look good and trustworthy on banners, billboards and cards, but on laptop screens, smartwatches and of course as app logos as well.
Brands
IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
